This New Year 2025 I woke up in New York, as you do when life continues to throw random curved balls at you and so much of what you do is determined by the illness of a loved one and looking for relief from it for them. As such it is not a bad place to wake up, and I felt gratifyingly smug being free from any kind of hangover, almost like I'd won a week of the unbearable smugness that having a white (sober) January heralds. It's a nice tradition, I think, to start the year with a health kick. January is such a long and booring month anyways, that it really is the same regardless of what you do. Might as well make it into a wellness month, becuase it will always irritate someone.
I usually make New Years resolutions too, as one of my yearly traditions. Long gone are the times when I made resolutions to loose weight or become a more successful version of myself in any way. Nowadays I make feel good vows, to the likes of wearing lipstick more often during the pandemic years and to keep in touch more regularly with besties who are supporting and make me happy, as opposed to those with a negative vibe. This year I resolve to spend more time writing, not with the view to achieve anything but as prioritising "me time" doing something I thoroughly enjoy. I will also try to learn to accept things that I cannot accept, and be nice to myself when I fail.
The last book I read last year was appropriately called Wintering, by Katherine May. It is a beautiful book and one that I warmly recommend. It's about letting go and accepting difficult times, and letting them be a source of rest and retreat. Obviously the themes resonated profoundly with me, but I also found her way of writing charming and inspiring in a soft, low key way. Not everything has to be massively exhuberant. Sometimes it's the softness that brings out the best in us, like the soft winter light in nature and the pared down colours of a winter garden. That is why I like walking in winter gardens. Without the showstoppers on display you get the structure and form of the gardens, and the essance of the trees and bushes too.
The same goes for life. When random horrible stuff happens, it often brings about a full stop and then chaos. After a while though, the new reality becomes the new normal, and you can begin to see the real structures of the life you are living. The bare bones of it, if you will. That is not to say it is an acceptable new normal, nor that the time between the event and the new normal has a set format. Sometimes it takes an awfully long time to glide into a new reality and accept what is actually there, behind all the exhuberance we cover up our lives with.
For me it has been three years now, and I know returning to the old is simply not possible. I will never have the future I envisioned. It has been a journey, and a very long process to get to the stage of accepting that. A lot of grief, and also a lot of gratitude for the things that are good in a bad situation.
Going into year four, I think I have developed resilience and a different kind of patience. My crisis solving skills have (involuntarily) improved. The bare bones of my life may be different than I had thought, but they are solid and good none the less. They can withstand winter storms, and much like walking in a winter garden, there are moments when I can enjoy it.
With this I whish you a very Happy New Year!
Comments